ollyKS

That is a strange way to phrase the question. Do you want to come to Thailand anyway or would you be coming to learn? It is obviously pointless to come to Thailand just to learn Thai as it is of no use whatsover the second you leave. If you are coming anyway then it is worth it.

‘‘I suppose people could make a connection between those kids and brothels but it was not our intention. I will discuss it with our people, but I think people realise a site like ours will have photos of kids on it.’’

Wow, so some random people are shown with the implicaiton that they are child sex workers. Imagine seeing a photo of someone you knew up there.

In my experience many charities are corrupt, and the bigger they get the more corrupt they seem to be. Only takes a few people to corrupt a whole organisation and the more people are involved the more likely you will get some shady people. If you want to help people, you need to literally help them, giving money is a waste of time.

-OKS

Young people, on the whole do not like old stuff. Try mentioning a film made before 1950 to someone under 25, they will look at you like you are mad 90% of the time. It is not a Thai thing, it is a young person thing. Loads of people in Europe get into Classical music as they get older.

-OKS

It has probably happened before, but I would be very very suprised if it was the first thing that sprung to mind after hitting someone for 99.99% of the population.

-OKS

At Bangkok Hospital I was standing behind a British guy of arab ethnicity and he was looking at a price list in Arabic, and questioned the prices as they were higher than what he had been quoted, the person behind the desk said "no, no, those are prices for arabs, not you". So there are at least two prices in Bangkok hospital, but probably three. Thai, Farang, Arab. I was reallly shocked. I have bumped into the Thai price vs. Foreigner price loads of times before, but I had never seen differences in pricing between foreigners.

-OKS

^^

Yes. If you don't kill them, the intruder will just sue you.

And Sing_Sling, it's not the education system at fault...it's just that both Americans and Thais share the same view, there is no rest of the world outside of the respective country.

This is not just in Thailand and America. It is pretty much everywhere but north-west Europe and the old colonies. I have had conversations with very educated Janese people who can speak fluent English that are entirely baffled as to why anyone would want to leave their home country, let alone go and live somewhere else.

-OKS

the only xenophobia I have seen sems to come from people working in the immigration depts. Though the one woman we have dealt with locally is quite nice, the rest...

To be honest a lot of the time when people say stuff like this it is because the official is sticking to the law. I saw one absurd situation where a French guy get very pissed off about the fact that he couldn't get the 6th tourist visa in a row. His excuse was "I have always done this, this is how it works".

The official came back with "You weren't supposed to be doing this, it is against the rules, you are not a tourist."

He then ranted and raved about how racist it was and such. Thailand has never been particularly ex-pat friendly. They love tourists, and welcome them with open arms, but just because you invite someone to your house for dinner does not necessarilly mean that you are going to be happy when they decide they have a right to stay the night.

I have witnessed people being told to "fuc_k off back home" with no provocation numerous times in the UK (especially when I lived in Liverpool) but never here. People tend to be very tolerant.

-OKS

That is the most appalling website I have ever seen. I would not trust anyone who could not be bothered to scrape together a couple of thousand baht to build a proper website. Not that I would invest in any company in Thailand where I did not know the directors well anyway.

there were a few instances some years back where hydrogen was used in balloons causing injury, though i suspect this story has become something of an urban myth.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say this is not true. Even if it has happened, the chance of these balloons being filled with hydrogen is very slim. Hydrogen is incredibly flammable, you would have to be insane to walk around with a balloon full of it. Where would you even get it from?

I only used online stuff when I was in UK. I think I did pretty well (although nothing compares to being here). I used Vocards Thai backed up with a couple of lessons per week with a skype tutor. How good the skype tutor is depends on the day. The internet in Thailand is not reliable in some places so if there is distortion or whatever it does make learning a lot slower. Still cheaper and less hassle than trying to find a 1-on-1 teacher in Britain though. There are language exchange websites where you can find people to talk to for free on skype, I haven't tried them, paying for lessons and getting 100% of the time is worth it for me.

This sounds awful. Neither situation is good for the child, but there may have been a very compelling reason for him to take the child. The system of child custody in most western nations sucks hard. The father has to prove that the mother is fiddling the kid or some such to get anything approaching fair treatment.

-OKS

I think calling the flood 'unforseeable' is a bit of a stretch. This didn't happen in the middle of the desert.

It is insane how intelligent, educated Thais would rather not use protection. I am not a Lothario by any means, and I have never been with a protistitute, but how the hell do they know that? You cannot tell within a couple of weeks or months whether a person is trustworthy and whether you should trust what they say about their sexual history.

The fact that they are willing to have unprotected sex scares the shit out of me and really puts me off.

I saw a couple of Farang once on the BTS in Bangkok speaking Thai to each other and I thought that was a bit odd, however I was introduced to an old german guy the other night and he didn't speak english and I certainly can't speak german so we ended up talking in Thai, that was out of necessity though, not for show.

There are reasonable reasons for this. Maybe they both speak better Thai than English? There are a great many Farangs who don't speak great English. For them it must be imperative to learn Thai immediately so they will speak better Thai than most Farangs. Speaking a foreign language with another foreigner is not an appaling way to practice either. Clearly not as good as with a native but not bad as long as you do not start copying the way they speak. I personally would not do this on the bts though, and not really at all in Thailand considering how easy it is to find natives to talk to.

-OKS

Forget tones on most words.

Remember tones on the 10-20 words in frequent use with different meanings.

(Cow, Maa, Key, Mai, etc)

Spend the time saved increasing your vocab.

This is appalling advice. Many Thais are not accustomed to hearing foreigners mangle Thai so pronunciation and tones are very important.

To answer the original question: Pick a word (preferably one you already know) for each rule, stick them on a little card with a very brief explanation as to why it is the tone it is. Whenever you see any written Thai, try and work out what tone the words are, if you cannot work out what tone it is, glance at your card. It will come very naturally within a couple of days.

Anki is total garbage. Instead of wasting time faffing around with that you'd be better off sticking post-it notes in a good textbook, or using a pen and notebook.

I could not disagree with this more. I find the more sources you use (friends/teacher/online/textbooks/flash cards) the more you end up learning per day because it does not feel like you are working as hard, and do not get bored. The only thing I stick to is having 1 hour a week one-on-one with a teacher, this way if my studying starts to tail off at all, the day before my lesson I start to feel guilty and start studying again.

-OKS

Its past tense because you say it is, or the person who wrote the original said so. You must know the context to make sense of most basic language.

As you know it says: You go which place in Thailand ครับ . It is as clear as that.

I agree, this is not necessarily past tense. It all depends on context.

Let the post office send them surface mail. My mate moved out here recently and brought everything for some reason, all his hifi and comics and crap. Took a while but he sent it a couple of weeks before he left and then travelled for a month or two before arriving in Bangkok. Was waiting for him when he got here.

The only thing to advise is go and pick it up with a Thai person, no matter how well you speak Thai it will be cheaper. As far as I can tell they just make up the duty as they go along. They wanted a couple of thousand baht import duty from him but he ended up paying a couple of hundred.

I have met a few people that have done it and their reports always vastly greatly from people who are going through it. It is a long and boring process, but is not particularly difficult. I think the stories of how impossible it is come from people that quit halfway through because they are bored of it or cannot be bothered. If you are going to stay here for the rest of your life you may as well do it. Especially if you have a wife/girlfriend willing to do the boring bits for you.

The problem that I see is those who are offering help expect something in return. I never expect anything in return... other than my own pleasure in helping others. Now, if someone abuses my trust then it's THEIR problem, not mine. I've lost nothing.

I do not think that expecting not to be harassed should be too much to expect. Even if they are ungrateful and piss the money up the wall it would be nice if they didn't get pissy when you deny the further money/favours. To be honest, when I help people out (which is not often, most people I know are better off than me) people are grateful and I do not think this guy was 'a sucker' for doing this. It is a shame that it will probably change his expectations and lead him not to help people that need it.

-OKS

Moving some flights to Don Mueang will reduce congestion because some people will decide not to fly through Bangkok.

Yes - I imagine this is how it will go. I have had to do a transfer that included a switch of airports a couple of times and I would try very hard not to do it again. You have to make everything a 'worse case scenario' meaning that if you are lucky, and everything is on time, you end up spending hours sitting around when you could be back up in the air again.

Just add a 30kilometre high-speed rail link between the two. Shuttle busses are not going to work

This seems like a decent solution, the airport link seems to work very well, and if you know the timetable you would not waste too much time. It will still hugely reduce the number of passengers transiting through though. Why bother when you can just go through Singapore and not have to do any of this stuff.

The daft thing is that this should not be neccessary, for the most part the airport is not overflowing, it is just a couple of bottle-necks causing all the problems. If the check in desks were more spread out and they had more security and immigration aisles the airport would not feel crowded at all. All my Thai friends think that the airport needs another terminal, but I think it just needs a little expansion and better organising.